

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In normal times, Ziad Hassan, a grocery store manager in Beirut, would get a daily email from his chain’s management telling him which prices needed to be adjusted and by how much.
But as Lebanon’s currency has collapsed, sending the economy into a tailspin, the emails have come as often as three times a day, ordering price increases across the store.
“We have to change everything,” an exasperated Mr. Hassan said, adding that his employees often weren’t even able to finish marking one price increase before the next one arrived. “It’s crazy.”
The country’s economic distress grew more acute last week as the Lebanese pound sank to 15,000 to the dollar on the black market — its lowest level ever — sucking value from people’s salaries as prices for once affordable goods soared out of reach. It has since rebounded to about 12,000.
A catastrophic explosion in Beirut’s port in August, which killed 190 people and left a large swath of the capital in ruins, only deepened the misery.
In a country where most products are imported, the currency collapse has left no sector unaffected.
the United Nations said that more than 55 percent of Lebanon’s population had become poor, nearly double the number from the year before. Extreme poverty had increased threefold to 23 percent. And the situation has worsened since.